Predicting Malicious Behavior: Tools and Techniques for Ensuring Global Security

Chapter 7

Applying Behavior Principles: Predicting Individual Malicious Behavior

The only thing we can do about the past is to learn from it. We can't go back and change the course of events leading to the present. We live in the present, adjusting our behavior to best meet existing conditions thrust upon us, often without warning. Perhaps life would be easier if we knew what future conditions would be before they occurred, but we usually don't. We are creatures of the present and are poorly prepared to anticipate the future.

How can we better prepare ourselves for the future? This chapter provides more details on how you can analyze and better anticipate malicious behavior. It also highlights the methods by which predicting human behavior helps us in preventing its occurrence.

Using a Behavior Analysis Methodology That Works

In our constantly changing world, we first take care of basic needs that currently have an impact on our personal lives, such as food and shelter. As psychologist Abraham Maslow so eloquently described in his theory of a hierarchy of needs in 1943,¹ once these basic needs are met, we can advance to taking care of social and complex psychological needs. Establishing and maintaining friendships, job satisfaction, love, and all manner of other objectives combine with meeting our most basic needs to absorb our attention and focus; life is a full-time job. Even if we construct a plan that guides us toward the future, we find that conditions are constantly changing, ...